Saturday, July 31, 2010

The day is named for Grateful Dead founder Jerry Garcia, an Excelsior District native son who lived his early years on Amazon Avenue, not far from McLaren Park.

Today, the park's amphitheater is named after the legendary musician/counter-culture guru who died in 1995. Sunday would have marked his 68th birthday.

Jerry Day -- put on by the Excelsior Cultural Group and the San Francisco Parks Trust -- celebrates Garcia and the neighborhood. In addition to live bands, there'll be food and arts and crafts for sale. Admission is free, but organizers welcome donations to help pay for the only-in-San Francisco event.

You love Mike’s Groove. The thought has nevertheless crossed your mind in the last year why versions of Mike’s Groove since Hampton haven’t been much, if any, better than “average-great.” (“Average-great,” because the average or typical Mike’s Groove is still great. After all, you love the song, and Phish typically plays it great-enough, right?)

Within the last year, I have listened to every Mike’s Groove since the awesome version performed at Big Cypress. In addition, in that time, I listened to about a dozen or two pre-Cypress versions. Why? Because I am a dork. But I was also compelled to do so under duress. The uber-fans behind the editing of Phish.Net’s hundreds of song histories in the last year, Phillip Zerbo and Steve Paolini, insisted — for many good reasons — that my Mike’s Song and Weekapaug Groove song histories be updated. They were very out of date. I hadn’t “worked” on them substantively in seven years — a period during which Phish had both retired, and reunited. And I didn’t want to begin that effort until I had listened to every version that Phish had played since Cypress.